BEWARE OF SPOILERS

Friday 23 January 2015

Black House: 16th Aug 2014 - 21st Jan 2015

Hahahaha, 5 months. Pitiful. I'll list my excuses/distractions at the end.




On the plus side, as Laura of Devouring Texts fame promised, it was way better that expected. Still not awesome, but as I say almost every time these days, it would probably have gone a lot better for me if I'd have just charged through it.

Part of me got excited by the Dark Tower references (probably because it's nice to feel part of the in-crowd) but the other part wished I gave much of a toss about The Dark Tower series. Up to now, I really don't. I'm still looking forward to the three upcoming installments of the series I have coming up after From a Buick 8 and Everything's Eventual.

Anyway, Black House. Early on, it was really obvious who was writing. I found Straub's exposition dreary and could tell when King took over with his crackling prose and irreverence. After a while, I didn't notice it as much. I think it stood out at first because I came at the book expecting not to like it (The Talisman didn't thrill me at all - http://thekinglongread.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/talisman-8th-may-19th-august-2011.html), so, like a dick, it was easy to latch on to this as confirmation that it was going to be cack. As it turns out, it wasn't cack. It made me want to revisit The Talisman. Based on how things are going, that might not be for another 5-10 years, so we'll see.

Distractions:
My rekindled love of American Football, heroically enabled by the NFL GamePass app for iPad. So good.

I've also been catching up on some TV with Netflix/Amazon Prime

Sons of Anarchy - bit of a guilty pleasure.
Justified - love it and looking forward to diving headlong into Elmore Leonard's bibiliography at some point
American Horror Story
- only series 1 so far, not 100% but with so many genuinely creepy moments, I'll go back for the rest.
The League - my wife has an aversion to it because my hooting and belly laughing gets on her nerves
Community - only on series 1 and so much of it falls flat, I wonder whether to keep going, but then there are some great bits that keep me pressing the 'play next episode' button.

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